A koi named Herky

The above pictures are of an injured koi named Herky. Herky is a 4-5 inch koi that belongs to Michele Hurley. Last fall, she noticed Herky was swimming funny and to her dismay poor Herky was missing the whole lower half of his tail and appeared to even have some of his spine sticking out. Harry and I stopped in to take a look at poor Herky and after much discussion and a poor prognosis, I told Michele I'd take him home and do my best to see if I could get Herky to heal. I didn't feel like he would ever be able to grow his tail back. Michele is a real fish lover, and I think she just didn't want him dying under her watch. Husband, Harry, said on the way home, "you really aren't' going to try to nurse him back to health are you? He's already pineconeing which means he's half dead". (Pineconeing is not a good sign and usually indicates the kidneys are affected and the fish is unable to keep water and or bacteria from flooding into it's body.) Yep, I said, I'm certainly going to experiment with him and do everything I know how to do. I told Michele, I would, and I am! So home we went with Herky in a six-pack cooler to put him in the Allsup fishy hospital. Herky was small, so went in a 3 gallon clear plastic storage box with only an air stone. I set him on a table by the window and actually set a mirror up beside his tank so in seeing himself he wouldn't think he was by himself. With no filtration at all, I did daily water change outs. On the first morning, I sedated him and cleaned and dressed his wound. I slowly began raising the salt in his tank to a whopping .06%!!! This is high, but with his pineconing, he needed lots of help to keep the water from flooding into his body. Every morning, I did water changes and replaced the salts to maintain this level. I'd had good results on another fish using an antibiotic water treatment called Elbegin. It only takes a pinch for this small tank. Turns the water yellow. Then it was a waiting game. Every morning I got up expecting to find Herky dead. I feed him 3 pellets of medicated food a day, which I never seen him eat. At night I netted out any wasted in the bottom of the tub. The pellets were always gone, but I didn't know whether he ate them or they dissolved. Day after day, I changed water, added salt and Elbegin and everyday Herky still greeted me. And, to my amazement, he got slowly better. The redness disappeared and was replaced with white skin. (A sign of healing)His bloating came down, too. Michele assumed since I hadn't called her on his condition, that he had passed. After, a couple months, I figured I wasn't doing anything for him that Michele couldn't do. So, I took him back to his original home, where Michele has kept him all winter, now.